Overviews and General Guidance


Senior manager? See this section!

 

A number of high-level studies have been commissioned which focus on, or consider issues around, Open Educational Resources (OER). There are also some useful practical guidance documents available as a result of project work in this and related areas. This section highlights many of the resources available to institutions, consortia and individuals with an interest in Open Educational Resources.

 

HE Academy/JISC UKOER Programme

The joint JISC/Higher Education Academy Open Educational Resources programme (April 2009 - October 2012) was a large scale programme across three yearly phases of activity. Known as the UKOER programme - projects, support teams and programme officers produced a wide range of reports, guidance, toolkits and other practical resources to inform the wider community around lessons learned around a wide range of issues:

For further information see the following pages:

 


Historical perspectives


Overviews and General Guidance


Research Reports


Practical resources


 

Case studies

 


 

Are there any messages around tools and standards that come from the programme?

Projects are using a very wide range of standards due to the wide range of materials being released:


Standards: SCORM, SWORD, SENDA/W3C/WAI/Section 508, IMS LD/CP/QTI, IEEE LOM, RSS/Atom, METS content packaging, Simple Dublin Core, OPML, OAI-PMH


Document formats: pdf/ua/odf, java, javascript, html, xhtml, css, wcag, word, mpeg, mp3, ajax, jpeg, flash, vra/cdwa, rss


CETIS is advising projects on technology and standards

 

What kinds of metadata are essential, what desirable, and what are the issues in creating and managing metadata?

Tension between rich tagging to ensure shared understanding of how resources address key academic issues, and lightweight, usable metadata solutions


Several approaches to tagging which will be explored to surface how lightweight the metadata requirements can be while facilitating discovery and reuse. e.g. adding multimedia support to e-Prints, using existing repository tools


Will better tagging improve Google ranking of OERs?


Long standing issue of who adds metadata still a consideration for projects - professional/academic/resource users

 

Guidelines For EngSC OER-Descriptions

How do existing repositories support the release, management, discovery preservation and access to OERs e.g. OpenJorum in the UK, institutional repositories within an institution, web sources globally, etc

Dealing with expired content and keeping content up to date


Duplicated content or linked-to?


Different degrees of openness available to depositors?


Choices re deposit into JORUMOpen? Open content ethos = specific hosting solutions don't matter. Also the development path of JorumOpen may be out of sync with project requirements


Many projects grappling with issue of consistency, tracking and management of resources available through web, institutional repositories and JORUMOpen, particularly in relation to preservation and archiving

 

What issues arise when using public/third-party hosting solutions?

What are implications of using e.g. SL islands, youtube, i-tunes, twitter...?


How well do Web 2.0 sites support interactivity e.g. Flash animations?


Web2.0 sites are at different stages of development and inconsistent in the media they will support - some specialise in specific media types and vary in how they allow access


There is an issue of resource ownership in relation to some or all third party web sites, e.g . in Flickr the person uploading the resource is, by default, the resource owner. Many sharing sites require consent to conditions of use statements that may violate CC and other licences.

 
 

How best to make hybrid, interactive and multi-media resources available for open access.

 

Dandelion Image CC BY-NC SonOfJordan